Hungary

European public accountability trends now updated!

The European Union is the absolute achiever on standards and benchmarks. Thousands exist and are strictly guarded by various enforcement agencies: some inspired anecdotes were furiously disputed over the Brexit divorce. Less spoken about are EU standards on public accountability, in spite of the bloc now having a Rule of Law (ROL) Report on the member states and monitoring processes for accession countries. There is a very simple reason for this: they do not exist as such. While we uphold a Europe that embraces ideals of rule of law and free of corruption as ideals for member states and aspiring countries, we do not actually have a standard way of achieving those, or clear European benchmarks. Finland and Denmark are quite unregulated on public accountability but extraordinarily transparent, and they lead in all good governance charts. Hungary and Poland have been backsliding on both rule of law and democracy but their legal arrangements are quite thick. In some areas, at least.

To understand how Europeans succeed in having transparent and accountable governments ERCAS has created as part of the EU-funded project DIGIWHIST a repository of legal data. We organized them as tools, described in detail as to coverage and instruments, and quantified – assigned a score for each extra provision, resulting in a higher score for countries with more comprehensive regulation. This is Europam.eu, an exceptional legal repository created in 2017. Today we update it at the level of 2020 data. You can find out there how countries are doing on freedom of information, oversight of assets and conflicts of interest of officials, party funding, and public procurement, as well compare each country against the rest of Europe and understand what is the mechanism which enables public accountability – or not.

Despite unprecedented discussion on rule of law in the European space and neighborhood, we found few changes since 2017. All the data is available at Europam.eu, and we present here only two chapters.

On public procurement, the average remained roughly the same, from 63 points in 2017 to 62 points in 2020 (from a total of 100), but more jurisdictions declined than improved.

Previous best scorers Slovakia (2020: #1) and Hungary (2020: #5) remained in the top 5, but Czechia dropped 5 positions. Romania (2020: #2), Malta (2020: #3) and Bulgaria (2020: #4) complete the top 5;
Out of the 3 previous lowest scorers, only the Netherlands (2020: #32) remained in the bottom 5. Poland was the worst jurisdiction, having lost a few points. Other countries at the bottom – Georgia (2020: #34), Sweden (2020: #33), and Iceland (2020: #31) – did not see real variation from their previous points (around the 50 points-mark), which suggests that other countries doing better, rather than them doing worse, is the cause of their poorer performance;
Countries that declined: Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Serbia, Sweden, and the European Union as a whole – 14/35 jurisdictions;

Countries that improved: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and the UK – 11/35 jurisdictions;

Countries that remained roughly the same: Armenia, Cyprus, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, and Switzerland – 10/35 jurisdictions.

On conflict of interest, the average improved slightly, from 40 points in 2017 to 44 points in 2020, and more jurisdictions improved than declined. This is good news for GRECO, which tirelessly promotes COI further restrictions in many countries.

Previous best scorers remained at the top – namely Latvia (2020: #3), Croatia (2020: #4), and Slovenia (2020: #5) – with Georgia improving significantly to get to the first spot and Serbia improving slightly (2020: #2);

Previous lowest scorers also remained at the bottom – namely Denmark (2020: #33) and the Netherlands (2020: #32) – with Finland (2020: #34) dropping significantly to get to the second-worst position and Belgium decreasing a few points to be the worst jurisdiction;

Countries that declined: Armenia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland – 11/35 jurisdictions;

Countries that improved: Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, and the European Union as a whole – 16/35 jurisdictions;

Countries that remained roughly the same: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia, Slovenia, and the UK – 8/35 jurisdictions.

To those who are surprised by these figures we just remind that laws and practices are poorly correlated when rule of law and corruption are concerned. Clearly, there is a great difference between high honesty countries and low honesty countries, with the latter regulating far more. But does more regulation increase public integrity, and which regulation? That is what we study next, and we invite you also to use the freely available Europam for your own analyses.

EU Rule of Law Report Captive on its Tracks

The European Commission is already planning a second rule of law report, although the first brought no further evidence to the already known problems of Hungary or Poland, and only showed the weakness of conceptualization and methodology at this stage. The German presidency made the concession to Hungary and Poland that Courts will have the first say in the event of a sanction. While critics were fast to denounce Merkel to have yielded to the populists, the most elementary legal common sense shows that Courts would have anyway got involved. Is it not better, then, to have them involved sooner rather than later?

Quite a few Parliaments and Governments invited me since then to present my criticism of the report from this Carnegie paper (thank you) and the alternative ways to go about solving the rule of law problem. While I have nothing to add to the criticism and the commission seems unwilling or unable to modify anything in the bureaucratic logic of the report (and the power mechanisms which made it that Wirecard case did not even get a mention) the alternative is the one that I had already suggested. We need to separate the issues, which are luckily correlated. If we want to cut EU funds, we need to use the public procurement policy and its very good monitoring by another part of the Commission (in the EU Single Market PP Scoreboard). Member states who do not reach targets there are the same who infringe on rule of law: Hungary, Poland, Romania, Malta, Czech Republic. That is a technical issue and as such, it is entirely at the disposal of the Commission, which had already done a first excellent step in letting Hungary know that it would not get the funds until it proves it is able to spend the money correctly [1]. For freedom of speech and judicial interference we need to use the other mechanisms- political in essence, as the final and sustainable solution to the EU rule of law problems is to persuade voters not to endorse leaders who are against rule of law. Both on legal and on persuasive grounds, it is better to cut funds for poor governance and corruption than for motives Mr. Orban can say are just matters of different political opinion.

But the EC seems these days, as on the vaccine issue, a train captured by its own tracks and unable to adjust course sensibly. The second round of consultations on the ROL report, thus, is not really a consultation more than the first has been. It is merely an attempt to crowdsource, collecting information, and of course leaving at the absolute discretion of the Commission if to mention Wirecard, BAFIN, and the rest at all.

It is rather clear that the report could hardly help, had the case of some infringement end in Courts, where legal reasoning would instead prevail. The question then is why spend all this money to produce a weak and biased report, when the Commission could instead outsource reports on freedom of the press, corruption (not anticorruption, as the meagre report attempts, as there is no way to separate the two which makes any sense) and judicial independence to those who generally deal with these issues and are both independent and professional? Such reports could be cited by those who work on the legal cases, as we have already seen in the legal cases against Hungary and Poland so far, although, of course, they would not make the bulk of the argument any more than the ROL report would. At least, however, there will be no stringent omissions.

The rule of law report was a concession by Von der Leyen to those who think populism can be fought only by populism, by publishing unsubstantiated figures of social loss due to corruption that no reviewer would ever validate in a normal academic review procedure or by piling up facts which do not amount to evidence, as many are simply irrelevant. The fact that it goes on like nothing happened during last year negotiations and no justified criticism was made by governments and experts who are not on the side of Poland and Hungary is not proof of resilience, but one of incapacity of a bureaucracy to learn and adjust, and the indifference which accompanies too much money one can spend.

[1] EU tells Hungary to change procurement, cites ‘systemic’ fraud | Financial Post

The EU Rule of Law Report: Unresolved Questions and a Proposal

The EU has chastised member states who do not adhere to its professed values. However, the new report about the rule of law falls short in providing the objective basis to withhold funding to those who defy democracy, a just goal still lacking the proper means. EU funds should be cut on direct and easier to prove criteria related to their poor governance, as shown in the EU Single Market procurement scoreboard. Recovery funds should not go to the political clienteles of government parties trespassing on rule of law, but to the broader constituencies of citizens and businesses in every member state.

The European Commission (EC) recently released a communication titled “2020 Rule of Law Report: The rule of law situation in the European Union”. The concept has never passed the test of a feasibility study and President Ursula von der Leyen has not even promised it as part of her original program. It was one of the pledges she had to make in exchange for political support during the hearings for her presidency. The report has been widely expected to offer a basis for the sanctioning of democratic backsliders such as Hungary and Poland. EC communications, however, have no binding power and can serve only to name and shame. The new report can therefore only bring some added value if its contents offer better arguments than those already in circulation. In fact, many are circulating already, as the European Parliament has not been idle and in the last two years alone interpellated Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Malta. Hungary and Poland are also fighting an Article 7 procedure. The European Justice Court is also involved and has already issued the first rulings on such problem countries.

The report covers four areas: the justice system, the anti-corruption framework, media freedom, and other institutional checks and balances. The Commission adopted the Council of Europe’s multifold definition of rule of law, but the report exceeds it by including media. This was actually a good decision, as freedom of the media has been declining in nearly all EU countries (except Romania, where it was never very high to start with) over the last decade, and media is an essential component for the control of corruption, aside from its more general role in a democracy (Brunetti and Weder 2001). The country chapters are based upon contributions from the member states and a variety of already available, mostly European sources. The countries are not ranked on any dimension – this would have been impossible, given both the qualitative methodology used and the reticence of member states to any ranking.

The patient readers of the whole report will not find anything new. But in the event that a second edition will ever follow – and the exercise is not discontinued like its predecessor, an anti-corruption report was—a few questions are important to address and eventually debate. And at least one clearer alternative emerges if indeed there is the political will to tie EU funds on rule of law.

Country Diagnosis Missing

Why is there not one fact-based problem statement for each country, stating clearly whether there is a problem with rule of law and if so, what does it consist of? Instead the report offers snapshots of judicial reforms in every country. The link between problems they were meant to address and these reforms is either missing or presumed. Some underlying assumption seems to exist that the organization of the judiciary is the source of its independence from government and private interests. Is that is the case, this goes against academic evidence, which shows on the basis of the same data that EC uses (Council of Europe CEPEJ) the contrary (Gutman and Voigt 2017). The independence of the judiciary does not result from specific constitutional arrangements, or the countries with the best such arrangements would have the best and most independent judiciaries. It stems from the historically developed power balance in every given country. The neglect of this simple, although counter-intuitive truth leads the reader confused about the relevance of the reforms presented to strengthen the rule of law, from digitalization in Belgium to reshuffling of the judiciary in Malta. Furthermore, why are bureaucratic mechanisms which did not deliver measurable improvements in the past decade (like the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism) advanced for the next? Is it not significant that Bulgaria—a country being assessed under the mechanism, which proposed a year ago for it to be lifted—was recently reprimanded by the European parliament?

Corruption Levels Explain Anticorruption, Not the Other Way Around

Why is the corruption section defined as “anti-corruption framework”? An anti-corruption framework makes sense only in relation to a given country’s corruption problems. Or is everybody supposed to have a similar framework regardless of their individual problems? If a relation existed between the density of regulation on anti-corruption and a reduction of corruption, this would be more understandable. But again, the reality is exactly the opposite: the most successful national integrity frameworks in the EU (and the world) are not the most regulated, but the other way around. Hungary has far more extensive public accountability mechanisms than Finland. Yet still, it is Finland that better manages to control abuse of office for undue profit (see Figures 1,2 below). Keeping track of all changes in regulation certainly has a value in itself, but it cannot replace a sound diagnosis of each problem and a matching policy solution, relevant to the context of every country. The report counts the existence of national anti-corruption strategies as progress, instead of checking real developments. Such an approach has been already pioneered in accession and EU-neighborhood countries, which have all come to have five-year anti-corruption plans (see Moldova, Montenegro and other “champions”). Yet the few successful countries of the last three decades–-the likes of Estonia under its former prime minister Mart Laar, and Georgia under its former president Mikhail Saakashvili—evolved due to reform packages very different from such plans.

Figures 1-3. Poland and Hungary public accountability regulation surpasses Finland on every count but transparency (Source: www.europam.eu)

The Report Does Not Cover the EU’s Cross-Border Problems

Does not this piecemeal, country-by-country approach by the Commission somewhat underscore the EU’s severe cross-border problems, which have showed the vulnerability of European common rule of law and public finance to organized crime, corruption and money-laundering? And is it not the role of EU institutions primarily to address such cross-border problems, which end up neglected because they require coordination across member states? There is very little in the report on the fundamental threats to European banks from organized crime and corruption, for instance.

There Is Little on Transparency

Why is transparency in general, despite being shown to be one of the most effective deterrents of abuse of power and corruption, so marginal in the report? Transparency is easy to monitor and to fix, and several initiatives in Europe monitor transparency in public procurement, spending, financial and banking operations, and so forth. It is the lack of transparency that hostile powers like Russia and others use to launder their money in EU banks and pose veritable security threats. Is it really a twenty-first century strategy to rely on the under-powered European Public Prosecutor’s office, which would anyway act well after the crime is produced and even investigated administratively (by the European Anti-Fraud office) for issues such as VAT evasion? Only full digitalization and inter-connectivity of EU data on financial transactions and public procurement will allow the prevention of such problems—and some instruments exist already. But why would any progress be made if the plan is that a massive problem will be addressed by a few lengthy prosecutions after the fact?

The Report Uses Vague and Imprecise Data

Why is the report so reliant on subjective data based on perceptions, such as Eurobarometer surveys [1] with leading questions (such as the rule of law is important, corruption is intolerable, etc.) and the Corruption Perception Index from Transparency International? The Eurobarometer surveys on rule of law and corruption are not panels using the same respondents to allow sound comparison in time—that would probably make them even more expensive than they already are. Academics have long proven that CPI, an average of expert perceptions, is not a proper tool to be used to measure corruption across years. If these surveys miss a measurement or lack a clear fact-based diagnosis of the causes of a particular problem, what can be monitored instead to track progress? Citizens’ perceptions, or the amount of regulation, despite their poor correlation with problems? Compliance with EU regulation and its implementation must be monitored, of course. But they cannot replace measuring the problems directly (judicial independence, lack of transparency, and corruption) to assess whether reforms manage to reduce them or not.

There Is Little on Public Procurement

Why is the area most related to EU funds, public procurement, so under-represented in the report? After all, if the goal is to sanction countries by cutting their EU funds, surely the case will be made easier (in the courts as well) if a more direct link were presented between funds and misbehavior? An example are the red flag procurement indicators (such as lack of open call for tenders or single bidding) from the European Single Market scoreboard, where several poor performers openly breech EU policy targets. Yet such indicators are barely mentioned despite data repositories now tracing corruption in procurement in the European Union in real time. For instance, Poland has been leading for years in non-competitive bidding at very high proportions, which could have offered an indication that all was not well there. Similarly, research on procurement has showed Hungarian manipulation of EU funds years before OLAF opened an investigation into Viktor Orban, so such fact-based indicators do exist and deliver.

Figure 4. A Clear Picture of Offenders in EU’s Procurement Scoreboard

aps and Biases

Why are major country facts, even for the previous year, simply missing from the report, and what methodology determined what is included and what is excluded? Is not the case of the Airbus corruption, for instance (a footnote in the France country report on the financial settlement mechanism) showing that rule of law was clearly imperfect if such practices were systematic over decades (and leaders above the law)? No word on the fact that the U.S. Foreign Corruption Practice Act seems to be behind the most important investigations into European companies—and not OECD anti-bribery convention? Surely this deserves an analytic paragraph, as it touches also on compliance and implementation, keywords of the rule of law. How can the report on Germany miss the Wirecard scandal entirely? There is now an investigation by the German parliament looking at the regulators’ conflict of interest and their failure to address the problem in time (instead, they acted against the Financial Times whistleblowers, relevant to press freedom, too). How can the report on Romania praise both the National Integrity Agency and the Anti-corruption Directorate, and not remark that the latter charged the head of the former with corruption, only for a court to finally clear him? Would it not be better to order a deep audit of this and several high-profile cases closed by the courts, before asking for more cases? Why is there no analysis of why the Commission recommended a year ago that MCV be suspended for Bulgaria and now it seems a problematic country again (given that nobody claims that its problems appeared last year, only the protests stepped up). Finally, although the list can be much longer, how can Luxembourg’s judiciary be praised as top of Europe, when a prison sentence of a court there against the Luxleaks whistleblowers was part of the motivation for the EU regulation on whistleblowing?

In conclusion:

Although some critics complained that negative comments are spread across too many countries, it is commendable that the reports tries to cover all EU member states equally and not discriminate against a few countries. However, the lack of clarity and transparency of the criteria for including or excluding facts in the absence of a clear methodology has backfired, leading journalists to assign degrees of seriousness and make diagnoses themselves. This does not necessarily result in more objectivity or depth of understanding of either problems or potential solutions.

It is undeniable that European Union member states have been backsliding on rule of law and democracy, and that action should be taken. But do we have fresher and better evidence after this report than before? And apart from backsliding on democracy, don’t we also need more awareness of what seem to be older problems of corruption and impunity? The issues at companies such as Airbus and Wirecard, in addition to those at many banks, have long been in existence and have been ignored by regulators despite warnings. Effective action needs to be based on serious audits and fact-based research on problems by professionals, not on public opinion surveys: questions like the ones above need to raised and answered for the EU to effectively confront its rule of law problems. It may be that the infringement of rights and the control of media are in a different category of problems from corruption or the imperfect independence of the judiciary, needing different solutions. This must be discussed openly.

However, this does not mean deterring action. For urgent matters, why not connect the procurement scoreboard with the cut of EU funds? The same suspects will be targeted, but with clearer and less controversial evidence: benchmarks already exist and are clear. Recovery funds should not go to the political clienteles of government parties trespassing on rule of law, but to the broader SMEs and populations of every EU MS.

For more details on evidence-based rule of law tools, visit:

https://www.againstcorruption.eu/

www.opentender.eu

http://www.europam.eu

http://www.integrity-index.org

[1] See also Europe’s Burden, chapter 5.

— This article is a version of a Carnegie Europe comment published under Carnegie’s Reshaping European Democracy project: https://carnegieeurope.eu/2020/10/20/unresolved-questions-on-eu-rule-of-law-report-pub-82999 —

Hungary is underperforming its human development and e-citizenry, having regressed on judicial independence and freedom of the press. Its high score is due to low administrative burden and reasonable transparency, including in procurement. Evidence exists of favoritism in public procurement, and conflict of interest regulation is well under the EU average.

An Objective Corruption Risk Index Using Public Procurement Data

In order to address the lack of reliable indicators of corruption, this article develops a composite indicator of high-level institutionalised corruption through a novel ‘Big Data’ approach. Using publicly available electronic public procurement records in Hungary, we identify “red flags” in the public procurement process and link them to restricted competition and recurrent contract award to the same company. We use this method to create a corruption indicator at contract level that can be aggregated to the level of individual organisations, sectors, regions and countries. Because electronic public procurement data is available in virtually all developed countries from about the mid-2000s, this method can generate a corruption index based on objective data that is consistent over time and across countries. We demonstrate the validity of the corruption risk index by showing that firms with higher corruption risk score had relatively higher profitability, higher ratio of contract value to initial estimated price, greater likelihood of politicians managing or owning them and greater likelihood of registration in tax havens, than firms with lower scores on the index. In the conclusion we discuss the uses of this data for academic research, investigative journalists, civil society groups and small and medium business.

Corrupt Contracting: Partisan Favouritism in Public Procurement. Hungary and the United Kingdom compared.

For politicians seeking to use a clientelist approach to achieve political and private gain, i.e., to prolong their hold on power and maximize personal profit, control of government contracting is a key tool. We theorise that politicians wishing to exploit government contracting for such ends will seek to increase their influence over three stages of public procurement – policy formation, implementation and monitoring – but that their efforts can be constrained by institutional controls and checks. We examine these influence strategies and institutional constraints by comparing one young democracy and one mature democracy, Hungary and the United Kingdom. Developing new procedural and outcome indicators of corruption risk in contracting, we use a change of government as a natural experiment to analyse partisan favouritism in procurement. We find that, in Hungary, where political influence is systematic and far-reaching, 50-60% of the market is dominated by favoured companies, compared to only 10% of the UK market.

The Anticorruption Report. Volume 3: Government Favouritism in Europe

This volume reunites the fieldwork of 2014-2015 in the ANTICORRP project. It is entirely based on objective indicators and offers both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the linkage between political corruption and organised crime using statistics on spending, procurement contract data and judicial data. The methodology used in the analysis of particularism of public resource distribution is applicable to any other country where procurement data can be made available and opens the door to a better understanding and reform of both systemic corruption and political finance. The main conclusion of this report is that public procurement needs far more transparency and monitoring in old Member States, where it is far from perfect, as well as new ones and accession countries, where major problems can be identified, partly due to more transparency and monitoring.This policy report is the third volume of the policy series “The Anticorruption Report” produced in the framework of the EU FP7 ANTICORRP Project. The report was edited by Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD from the Hertie School of Governance, head of the policy pillar of the project.

Print and e-book versions of all full reports can be purchased here.

Reviews for this publication

“Public infrastructure projects and other types of government procurement almost everywhere in the world suffer from favoritism and corruption, if not outright criminality. The spoils always go to the people with the right connections, wealth, or the willingness to use or threaten violence. This is among the most difficult aspects of governance for scholars to study: those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk. This slim volume summarizes detailed studies of favoritism in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine. A final chapter shows how criminal organizations in many countries—including Mafia-like groups in Bulgaria and Italy—infiltrate national and EU-level public spending projects. Each chapter is packed with a remarkably rich set of charts, graphs, and statistical analyses that capture how much corruption exists and how it works. These succinct and eye-opening quantitative estimates of what really goes on beneath the surface of government make for indispensable reading and should straighten out anyone who doubts that the powerful always find ways to reinforce their influence and wealth, even on the “cleanest” of continents.”

Andrew Moravcsik, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University in Foreign Affairs

Report on Hungary on institutions in public procurement for the infrastructure sector

This report aims to document and to investigate the extent and the determinants of government favouritism in EU funded infrastructure development. It uses a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods. While predominantly relying on the analysis of contract-level quantitative data on Hungarian public procurement, it also provides a discussion of the institutional framework and particular cases based on document analysis and interviews.It finds that public procurement of infrastructure from national or EU Funds is a hotspot for corruption in Hungary just like in the other countries investigated by ANTICORRP Work Package 8. However, corruption is not pervasive everywhere and even high-level political influence has it limits. While the economic environment has varied greatly, public procurement spending on infrastructure followed a political logic with elections, EU funding cycles, and political power games playing a crucial role. It has proven to be one key public resource up for grabs for corrupt elites. Controls of corruption in public procurement in general are weak: not only is effective transparency very limited and declining rapidly since 2010, but also institutional remedies are likely to be controlled by the current governing party.As a result of extensive public resources available, weak controls, and a complex regulatory environment facilitating close cooperation between bidders and public bodies, corruption is widespread in infrastructure provision. Political connections, far from having a uniform impact, are effective in facilitating rent extraction only when organisational integrity is weak and both the bidders and contracting entities are politically controlled. In micro-cosmoses of high integrity, political connections are ineffective at best, but may even handicap companies.

Culture, organizational change and bounded morality in the Hungarian public administration

This paper deals with the analysis of ethnographic data on public administration cases in Hungary. The main focus is on the perception that public administrators have of integrity challenges, how far these influence their daily tasks, the most relevant changes introduced at the government and policy level, as well as the socio-cultural explanations that are most commonly given in relation with the issue of corruption in the country. I have chosen to deal with the public administration in general because of three reasons. First, understanding the everyday work of public administration in a country is a complex task which, departing from the study of the organisational structure and its dynamics and expanding to the changes introduced at the policy level, it needs a nuanced and interdisciplinary approach. Nonetheless, I believe that through the innovative lens of the anthropological approach, it is possible to investigate some of these features through a bottom- up perspective that looks at ways how administrators perceive the main challenges, strengths and their changes in the field of integrity. Second, since corruption is a phenomenon that affects longitudinally all levels of the public service in a country (although to different extents), I consider that information gathered from different sectors in the public administration and analysed comparatively may provide a multifaceted and dynamic picture of the phenomenon. Finally, and due to the overarching nature of corruption that covers any field in which the public sphere meets the private, it can be useful to understand what are the common risks and the diverse challenges that any of the sectors under investigation are determined by, in the exercise of the public office.

The Splintering of Postcommunist Europe

There are two radically different versions of the postcommunist narrative. One tells the triumphal tale of the only world region in which the reforms recommended by the “Washington consensus” worked. The other and more realistic account speaks of a historic window of opportunity that lasted for only a quarter-century, during which efforts by the West and patriotic elites of Central and Eastern Europe managed to drag the region into Europe proper, leaving Europe and Russia pitted against each other along the old “civilizational” border between them. This essay argues that while Institutional choices matter in the postcommunist world, geopolitical and civilizational boundaries still set the horizons of political possibility.

Waging Battle on The Anticorruption Frontline

The demand for good governance is on the rise everywhere, from Kiev to Sao Paulo, Paris to New Delhi. But has any measurable progress been made recently? Do we know which countries are succeeding and why? Do anticorruption experts and policy makers understand public concerns about corruption?

The Anticorruption Frontline, the second volume of the FP7 ANTICORRP project policy report launched last week at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, finds less than encouraging answers to these questions: Despite increased effort to fight corruption worldwide, there remains little progress on the ground. Even in countries which have shown improvement, the use of public office for private gain remains an issue. Public opinion surveys tracking concerns about corruption are frequently misunderstood – by those being surveyed as well as those proposing anticorruption policy solutions.

New research by Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi of the Hertie School of Governance shows that decreased confidence in the EU, especially in Western and Southern Europe, is linked closely to citizens’ perceptions of their national government’s ability to control corruption. This confidence has been eroded in the wake of the euro crisis, most markedly in countries with the worst growth performance. Central and Eastern Europe, however, remains the last bastion of trust in EU institutions, which is perceived largely as a counterweight to untrustworthy national institutions.

Two European case studies from The Anticorruption Frontline illustrate that EU funding regulations and anti-corruption legislation alone are no panacea for the rampant favoritism inherent in extant particularistic systems. Despite an improved Bulgarian anticorruption rating according to most accepted measures, findings from the Center for the Study of Democracy on Bulgarian governance show that the avoidance of market competition in areas such as public procurement remains the rule rather than the exception. In another chapter, Mihaly Fazekas’ unique data mining method on the awarding of EU structural funding uncovers systemic corruption in Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian public contracting methods.

Such preferential treatment – and its inherent abuse of power – is one of the most insidious forms of corruption facing the world today. Further case studies from The Anticorruption Frontline include deeper analysis of Qatar and Rwanda, two countries singled out for their improvements on anticorruption measures, yet both of which still exhibit favoritism in public procurement, as well as a look into the corrupt bed of Ukraine‘s gas market, exposed in the wake of 2014’s uprising. As every case in the book makes clear, traditional measures of corruption often fail to measure the existence and subsequent impact of such exploitation of public trust for private gain.

The Anticorruption Frontline argues that further EU regulation is not the solution. As a multidimensional phenomenon, fighting corruption requires tailored policy approaches as well as sustained support in areas such as improving transparency and strengthening civil society. The answer instead may lie in a transition from EU co-financing of large public projects – where the risk of corruption is higher – to a more universal and non-discretionary allocation of EU funding, such as an Europe-wide unemployment benefit scheme.

The Anticorruption Frontline is available for purchase via Barbara Budrich Publishers.

Measuring Corruption Risk using “Big” Public Procurement Data in Central & Eastern Europe

Survey: Institutional performance and social values in Hungary

The following report is based on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork, as a part of the ANTICORRP project, Work Package 4 – The Ethnography of Corruption. In particular, it deals with the results of a survey conducted in Hungary on a small sample of 103 inhabitants of the city of Budapest.

The aim of the survey is to collect information on how different areas of the public and private life are perceived by the respondents, and in particular: public institutions, local development, local customs, and values. The main focus of the questions is to investigate how people deal with the problem of corruption (if perceived at all), its effects, practices, social and cultural norms, as well as with the anti-corruption discourse, both at a local and national level. It is important to stress that the word “corruption” itself is not directly used in the survey, with one exception in section D, where it is used to address one of a series of hypothetical scenarios. Avoiding direct references to corruption as a phenomenon was a choice based on the awareness that corruption itself is hard to define and to frame, since it consists of multiple practices not always perceived as fraudulent or illegal, which are not necessarily fitting the social understanding of object corruption. Using a word that has such strong moral and social implications in the public discourse would have possibly influenced the results of the survey, and make the respondent feel at unease or bias their responses when dealing with such matters.

The survey target has been the ordinary residents in the above mentioned cities, in an attempt to give a bottom-up perspective of the relationship between the citizen and the institutions at multiple levels (from local to nations and supranational), as well as to underline how the citizens relate to such institutions in matter of social trust and ability to interact with them.

The survey is aimed at providing comparable data among the countries it has been conducted in, in the scope of the WP4 research. Therefore it serves the purpose of providing information which could be used in a wider, comparative framework.

Comparative country reports on institutional performance Countries: Bosnia, Kosovo, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Tanzania, Turkey.

The report draws on ethnographic research undertaken in 8 countries object of investigation by the WP partners, namely: Italy, Hungary, Bosnia, Russia, Turkey, Kosovo, Tanzania and Mexico. In addition, an additional chapter (Annex 2) will render the case of Japan which will serve as a contrast case on which to assess ideas and practices of governance and institutional performance through an anthropological perspective. The report includes data gathered through a questionnaire survey undertaken, with minor differences, in all the eight countries included in WP4. The data analyzed comparatively refer to three main fields: perceived and experienced performance of local institutions, local problem and resolution ideas, socio- cultural norms and values. We have identified, following the anthropological literature, a number of cultural issues that are in relation with corruption, or with local citizens’ experiences of the functioning of public institutions in their countries. This first deliverable constitutes an attempt to draw some preliminary conclusions on the interaction between socio- cultural features and governance (both as experienced and perceived) which will be further and ethnographically explored in the final deliverable of this Working Package.

Top Berlin Airport Official Accused of Bribery

Barely six months into his contract as Head of Technology for the Berlin Brandenburg Airport (Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH (FBB)), Jochen Grossmann has been accused of demanding a half a million Euro bribe from a prospective contractor. This is only the latest in a long list of problems for the airport which is now estimated to be as much as €6 billion over budget and at least five years behind schedule (the FBB has actually declined to set a new opening date). Harmut Mehdorn, FBB CEO, has admitted that even more irregularities in the awarding of contracts could be found.

The notion that there might be more corruption in such a large-scale infrastructure project would come as no surprise to anti-corruption researchers. Indeed, recent research by the FP 7 ANTICORRP project showed that big infrastructural projects are prone to high levels of corruption. The concluding chapter of The Anticorruption Report Volume 1, Controlling Corruption in Europe stated: “Spending on new infrastructure projects, for example, allows the channelling of government resources to favourite companies either directly or through local or regional governments producing unnecessary outputs with high costs.”

While the corruption allegations are nothing new for a large infrastructure project, they are interesting in Germany which is usually held up as an example of good governance. The second chapter of the same ANTICORRP book placed Germany in a group of countries with relatively low risk of corruption, where control of corruption has largely been achieved and occasional incidences of corruption are handled successfully. Thus far, the case of the airport appears to be one where such incidences are being addressed quickly and publicly.

The FBB signed an Integrity Pact with Transparency Germany in 2005 and engaged local public procurement expert Professor Peter Oettel (Oettel is honorary professor at the Technical University Berlin and was former Head of the Department of Structural Policy for the city where he was responsible for overseeing public procurement) to work with TI in monitoring contract awarding for the airport. According to the FBB, this was the first time a German company took such a step, however, according to Transparency Germany; it took nearly a decade to convince the company to sign the pact.

The FBB also has an ombudswoman, an anti-corruption officer and an anti-corruption task force. The FBB reported the suspected corruption to public prosecutor in Neuruppin who then conducted a search of the office of two accused associates as well as the private premises of the chief suspect. The public prosecutor has described the situation as a “classic model of corruption in business dealings.” The task force is comprised of: legal experts, examiners from the FBB, outside legal experts, anti-corruption experts and a representative from Transparency International (TI) who will now review all the contracts awarded by Mr. Grossmann.

The bribery allegation against Mr. Grossmann, which emerged near the two-year anniversary of the cancelling of the open date, is the second publicised incident of corruption involving the airport in a little over a year. Last April, three men were charged with corruption after bribes were paid by firms wanting to secure airport contracts.

Corruption in public procurement will continue to be a key research focus for the ANTICORRP project, with the result of research on the impact of EU funds on control of corruption due later this year. A study released late last year by ANTICORRP researchers Mihály Fazekas and István János Tóth compared public procurement processes involving EU funds and national funds in Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic and found that up to 1/3 of EU funds are touched by corruption.

Anatomy of grand corruption: A composite corruption risk index based on objective data

Although both the academic and policy communities have attached great importance to measuring corruption, most of the currently available measures are biased and too broad totest theory or guide policy. This article proposes a new composite indicator of grand corruption based on a wide range of elementary indicators. These indicators are derivedfrom a rich qualitative evidence on public procurement corruption and a statistical analysis of a public procurement data in Hungary. The composite indicator is constructed by linkingpublic procurement process ‘red flags’ to restrictions of market access. This method utilizes administrative data that is available in practically every developed country and avoids thepitfalls both of perception based indicators and previous ‘objective’ measures of corruption. It creates an estimation of institutionalised grand corruption that is consistent over time and across countries. The composite indicator is validated using company profitability and political connections data.

Corruption manual for beginners: “Corruption techniques” in public procurement with examples from Hungary

This paper develops 30 novel quantitative indicators of grand corruption that operationalize 20 distinct techniques of corruption in the context of public procurement. Each indicator rests on a thorough qualitative understanding of rent extraction from public contracts by corrupt networks as evidenced by academic literature, interviews and media content analysis. Feasibility and usefulness of the proposed indicators are demonstrated using micro-level public procurement data from Hungary in 2009-2012. While the prime value of this broad set of indicators is the possibility of combining them into a robust composite indicator of high-level corruption, the high degree of detail also reveals that many regulatory interventions have succeeded in changing the form of corruption, but not its overall incidence.

EU Funds Curse? New evidence on the reciprocal impact between EU funds and corruption in CEE

Finding an accurate measure of corruption is a problem that has puzzled anti-corruption researchers for some years now. In the framework of the ANTICORRP project, researchers are currently trying to produce a new generation of indicators which allow comparisons across countries and time while being more concrete and specific than the first generation which are based on perception aggregates (for instance the Corruption Perception Index).

This new European paper takes an important step in that direction by using a technique known in audit studies as data mining. Under this method, researchers look for deviations from an ordinary, normal pattern to identify corrupt behaviour. In this paper, Fazekas et al.[i] use a newly created database of public procurement procedures in Central and Eastern European countries to reach three objectives:

Create an instrument based on data mining to assess procurement risk which can be used to estimate across countries and time (to see, for instance, if reforms are working);
Compare corruption risks of EU funded and national public procurement as well as estimate the value of EU funds allocated in a particularistic way; and
Make recommendations on how to monitor EU funds more effectively.

Fazekas et al produced a series of studies [ii] developing new corruption measures, of which “Are EU funds a corruption risk? The impact of EU funds on grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe” is only the first to have major findings. These are as follows:

The authors prove that public market domination by certain companies or bids won by single bidders are significantly related to irregularities in the procurement process. They furthermore infer that an early sanction of such irregularities would be able to curb corruption. Using a database of over 120 000 public procurement procedures in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia they look for anomalies on two sides of each procedure: 1) at entry, unusual processes (e.g. an exceptionally short bidding period) and 2) at exit, unusual outcomes (e.g. the winning bid had no competition, or the winning company frequently wins bids, both indicating favouritism). Using inferential statistics they manage to link the former to the latter.
Fazekas et al. use their analysis of procurement process anomalies to calculate a corruption risk index (CRI) which expresses the probability of particularistic allocation of public procurement contracts. Particularistic resource allocation implies that prior explicit rules of spending are bent in order to benefit a closed circle while excluding others. Comparing CRI of EU funded and similar nationally funded procurement contracts, they assess the effectiveness of EU institutions to curb corruption. They find that EU funds represent higher corruption risks in Czech Republic (3%) and Hungary (8%) than comparable national spending, while in Slovakia EU funds are less risky than national funds (13%). Although Slovakia has a much higher level of corruption than the two other countries to start with.
In order to better gauge corruption risks in EU funds, the authors calculate the expected value of public resources allocated in a particularistic way by combining the probability of particularism and the value of procurement spending. They estimate that throughout 2009-2012 particularistic resource allocation affected 0.94% of GDP in Czech Republic, 1.15% of GDP in Hungary, and 1.61% of GDP in Slovakia. In total, they argue that the funds affected by particularism may reach up to 1.2% of their combined GDP which is an impressive figure especially when compared to the total amount of EU funds allocated to these countries: 3.3% of their combined GDP.
Despite coming with theoretically better legal protection attached, EU funds proved a double liability for public procurement as presented in this paper. First, because as the first ANTICORRP policy report, “Controlling Corruption in Europe” already warned, EU funds stimulate discretionary public spending (as compared to more predictable rule based spending, for instance on pensions). Second, because they seem to be targeted more by rent seekers resulting in a higher risk of funds being captured by a ‘favourite’ company.

Estimated value of national and EU funded public procurement disbursed in a particularistic way, by country, % of 2009-2012 total GDP

Source: PPC

Note: In order to arrive at an approximate total public procurement spending figure, spending values based on announcements in the National Public Procurement Bulletins were approximated to total public procurement spending estimated by the OECD based on the system of national accounts (OECD, 2013). As the total public procurement spending figures are upper bound estimations and the proportion of EU funding within public procurement spending not reported in the National Public Procurement Bulletin is unknown, figures in the graph may be overestimations.

Given the high risks, what can the EU do to better protect its investment and ensure that funds are disbursed in a more competitive and transparent manner? The ANTICORRP policy team offers the following recommendations:

Introduce an EU-wide, real-time monitoring mechanism of EU funds spending designed to detect systematic fraud and corruption in public procurement using data mining techniques.
Increase national civil society capability for monitoring governance and controlling corruption at both national and local levels especially with regard to EU funds.
Consider re-allocating EU funding from discretionary investment projects which typically constitute high corruption risk, towards non-discretionary spending such as education.

[i] Mihály Fazekas, Jana Chvalkovska, Jiri Skuhrovec, István Janos Tóth, and Lawrence Peter King, (2013), Are EU funds a corruption risk? The impact of EU funds on grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe. Published as through the Corruption Research Centre Budapest as CRCB-WP/2013:03 and through the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building as WP No.39

[ii] Key publications are: Fazekas, M., Tóth, I. J., & King, L. P. (2013). Anatomy of grand corruption: A composite corruption risk index based on objective data. CRCB-WP/2013:02, Budapest: Corruption Research Centre.

Fazekas, M., Tóth, I. J., & King, L. P. (2013c). Corruption manual for beginners: Inventory of elementary “corruption techniques” in public procurement using the case of Hungary. CRCB-WP/2013:01, Corruption Research Centre, Budapest.

Fazekas, Mihály, István János Tóth, and Lawrence Peter King. 2013c. “Hidden Depths.The Case of Hungary.” In Controlling Corruption in Europe vol. 1, ed. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi. Berlin: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 74–82. ERCAS WP 37.

Are EU funds a corruption risk? The impact of EU funds on grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe

Fazekas et al explore the impact of EU structural funds on institutionalised grand corruption in three countries where corruption is systemic – Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia – between 2009-2012. They examine whether EU funds have contributed to weakening institutional quality in terms of wasteful public spending and increased ‘legal’ corruption conducted through public procurement. By exploiting a unique pooled database containing contract-level public procurement information for all three countries they are able to systematically examine corruption risks associated with EU funding at the micro-level. The authors also develop a composite corruption risks indicator based on the incidence and logical structure of ‘irregularities’ in individual public procurement transactions.

Fazekas et al. ultimately claim that EU funding impacts institutionalised grand corruption in CEE in two ways: first, by providing additional public resources available for corrupt rent extraction; second, by increasing the controls of corruption for the additionally allocated funding. Their preliminary calculations indicate that the first effect increases the value of particularistic resource allocation in the three countries up to 1.21% of their GDPs, while the second effect decreases the value of particularistic resource allocation by up to 0.03% of GDP. However, the latter beneficial effect is entirely driven by Slovakia, which has a high national corruption risk level; while in Czech Republic and Hungary this impact is even negative. The authors conclude with several policy recommendations calling for a radical improvement of the monitoring and controlling framework.

Are EU funds a corruption risk? The impact of EU funds on grand corruption in Central and Eastern Europe

The Anticorruption Report. Volume 1: Controlling Corruption in Europe

The first volume of the Anticorruption Report series provides a comprehensive analysis of causes and consequences of corruption in three European regions, presenting corruption risks for several European countries and concrete policy recommendations on how to effectively address those risks.

Print and e-book version of the report can be purchased here.

Hidden Depths. The Case of Hungary

This report investigates corruption risk of EU funds spending in Hungary within the framework of the Public Procurement Law. Its finding is that in spite of what is a tight regulatory framework EU funds are likely to fuel the abuse of public spending. Even though public procurement using EU funds faces considerably more stringent regulation, their use poses much greater corruption risks when compared with funds procured domestically and corruption risks are particularly pronounced for large projects. The report also argues that large-scale institutionalized corruption in Hungary may be widespread and driven primarily by political cycles. Such corruption, often labeled “legal corruption”, typically involves neither bribery nor collusion between lower level bureaucrats and private individuals; rather, it operates through contractual relationships which benefit the highest echelons of the political and business elite. There are a small number of new anti-corruption initiatives of the new government which entered office in 2010, but while they might indicate a positive step towards higher public sector integrity, their results are yet to be seen.

Hidden Depths. The Case of Hungary

Freedom of Information Law Amendment Restricts Access to Information in Hungary

Last April, the Hungarian government presented in London its official implementation plan for the commitments taken as part of the country’s joining the Open Government Partnership multilateral initiative for improving government transparency and accountability. Only a week later, however, an amendment to the freedom of information law, in force since 2012, was proposed by the ruling party Fidesz and threatened to severely restrict civil society’s access to public information in the country.

The amendment was proposed during a special Parliament sitting on April 30^th and was approved by the Parliament in less than 48 hours. In its essence, the amendment states that only the State Audit Office and the Government Control Office may hold enough data to conduct large audits, and allows government bodies to deny “excessive” data requests by the public. Moreover, it requires citizens to justify a “legitimate interest” for some kinds of information requests, such as the ones involving access to court cases or personal information on public officials. These dispositions were seen as a great threat to civil society initiatives focusing on the disclosure and processing of large databases with government information, and the vagueness of the wording, not specifying what may be considered as a large audit, a legitimate interest or an excessive request, leaves great leeway for arbitrary interpretation and resistance of government departments to making certain information available.

Civil society organisations reacted strongly against the amendment. According to Miklós Ligeti, legal director at Transparency International Hungary, “this amendment is the first step down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which is full state control of public information. It heralds a dark age for democratic governance in Hungary. The law will now allow government officials to get away with bias in their actions and could see corruption go unseen and unpunished in future”.

Transparency International Hungary, public spending watchdog K-Monitor, the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and investigative reporting website atlatszo.hu declared that they would quit an anti-corruption working group coordinated by the Ministry of Justice in protest to these restrictions on access to information. Civil society groups also claimed that the amendment seems to be a reaction for increased pressure for disclosure of information on bids in a tender for tobacco retail licenses, which allegedly benefited government party loyalists. The government maintains a monopoly on the retail of tobacco and can grant concessions to run tobacco shops, but the criteria for assessing the bids are kept secret, as are the names of applicants and the names of those who evaluate the bids. Many argue that this may have been used by the ruling party to favour their supporters and strengthen their position for next year’s parliamentary elections.

After the approval in Parliament, the amendment was sent to President János Áder, but he did not sign it and sent it back to Parliament for reconsideration. Nevertheless, freedom of information advocates and civil society organisations had expected him to ask for a ruling from the Constitutional Court on the constitutionality of the law.

(The picture featured above is from telegraph.co.uk and is credited to Alamy.)

Research Project Finds Signs of Political Influence in the Hungarian Public Procurement Market

As part of on-going efforts to monitor the Hungarian public procurement market and understand corruption, market shares and contract volumes of public procurement contract winners have been analysed by the research team at the Corruption Research Centre, Corvinus University of Budapest. The goal of the analysis was to determine what impact the change of government in 2010 has had on the public procurement market, and especially to explore whether there is substantive evidence for the common claim that politically connected firms control large parts of the Hungarian public procurement market. The new government implemented large scale personnel changes already in 2010, so if political connections matter for winning public procurement contracts, we should see drastic changes in companies’ market shares after the elections.

Preliminary results indicate that companies with the largest market shares in the public procurement market in 2009, that is, before the change of government, have greatly diminished in their market share by 2011, whereas the market share of the biggest companies in 2011 was insignificant prior to the change in government. Thus, the market share of companies with major public procurement orders before and after the change of government seems to have changed in opposite directions.

Statistical data analysis of all firms with public contracts between 2009 and 2011 also confirmed the significant effect of the change in government on the public procurement market, and thus the potential political influence over market performance of companies. With the help of a standard economic model, changes in the total contract value of almost 4,000 companies in the public procurement market in 2009 and 2011 were estimated. This econometric model takes into account company size, the location of company headquarters, the main public procurement market, and market concentration. The results show that companies with the largest total value of awarded contracts in 2009 performed significantly worse than anticipated by the model, while those with the largest total value of awarded contracts in 2011 performed above prediction. These results strengthen the hypothesis that, aside from the economic logic, political factors also played a role in determining the dynamics of public procurement markets in the period 2009-2011.

Furthermore, the companies performing considerably worse or better than what the standard economic model predicts tend to win public procurement contracts under conditions deemed to carry higher corruption risk than those companies whose performance fits a standard economic logic. They are more likely to have no competitor, tender in a non-open procedure, face extremely short submission periods, and their contracts are more likely to be modified after contract award.

Even though these results are only preliminary and much further research is needed, they have already spurred considerable media attention in Hungary, as they put into context numerous reports criticising individual companies for exploiting their political connections in order to win public procurement contracts.

(contributed by Mihály Fazekas, PhD student at University of Cambridge and participant in the public procurement research programme at the Corvinus University of Budapest)

Pages: 1 2

Subscribe to our Newsletter